Unique Story-Any Good? Thread

No I don't have a name yet. I'm not sure whether or not this is a good idea or not, but here it goes:

For years a mysterious cult has been operating around the world praising the so-called alpha. The government thinks it's just a bunch of lunatics; until they see inside their HQ. Now that they've seen the cult's crimes of human torture and modification, they're ready to stop them, until they come to the sad truth that they have lost all of their power to this evil organization. They then decide to launch a special team of soldiers to the cult's HQ, a space station orbiting earth. You are a part of this team.

The game starts with you in a [spinny thing for astronaut training] so essentially darkness with whooshing sound effects. You exit it and are lead by scientists around the launch facility to suit training and mission briefing areas, before a launch into space. You arrive at the space station with your team, and encounter little resistance in getting to the Alpha, as you have snuck in undetected on a tram inside the station (this station is HUGE-not like Black Mesa or anything but HUGE). You enter a cinematic sequence where your teammates fire the bomb you have been given at the alpha, and it explodes (the alpha is an alien, essentially a giant glob of black goo except cool) and your screen fades out to two soldiers leaning over your body.

You wake up in a prison cell. Essentially a metal box with a single ultra-bright, blue spotlight in the middle (with flourescent light noises!). You are led through the rest of the station's prison areas into the test chamber. You are commanded to test a device that will manipulate the goo given off by the Alpha's body. The device will play a key role in the game, similar to Half-Life 2's gravgun. The device will allow you to stretch the paint-like remnants into large physics objects, which can be manipulated with the updated version of the gun. You must escape quickly from this test cahmber and then excape through the prison. This area will be interesting in that there will be areas that are for prisoners, and areas for guards. At this point where you are escaping you will be in the guards' area and will be viewing areas you have passed before. At the end of the prison areas, you can choose to just take the elevator up to the top of the station or to work your way to the main control room and set the prisoners free. Doing so would be challenging but may result in allies.

From this point on you fight your way out of the station-but I haven't thought as much about this portion yet.

Sorry, for the unnesecary specifics. Please evaluate the general idea.
Also, this will be for Source and be a SP fps.

Deathbagel wrote: The device will allow you to stretch the paint-like remnants into large physics objects, which can be manipulated with the updated version of the gun.

That's the bit that's interesting to me - it needs a lot more than a single sentence to do it justice

Ok, so the "black goo" is a sort of catalyst and the gun is the catalysator allowing you to transform matter. As a professional storywriter I have to ask: why? Why can you transform the goo and what is the purpose?
Upon reading I immediately thought about ancient Asian mythology, especially about finding the "true form" of a being or an object. There is also the idea of inherent forms, but that stems more from sculpting than from philosophy.
So, essentially you are a person, who transforms a certain kind of matter into something/anything else. Why do you do that and to what end? Can you perhaps learn scrolls or techniques to control the black matter? It's not really a clear discription and I can't really tell where you are going with the idea, but it seems interesting enough for a revisit.

"[spinny thing for astronaut training]" it's called a centrifuge. And its for creating a tolerance for high gee environments.
Good concept though. Think it through and write a design document if your really serious, i would love to see as sort of, "action" portal but with physics!

thats not a centrifuge, this is a centrifuge > En.wikipedia.org
i know what its called, its on the tip of my tongue but i dcant remember it >.> hate when that happens
anyway
sounds cool tough but i think its realy realy hard to implent
btw,

Thanks for the feedback. I was intending to have the gun play a more secondary role, not take center stage. Fill a role more like HL2's gravgun than the portal bun in portal. But if that's the part everybody like then I guess I'll go with it.

@SinKing: I was planning on taking a more sci-fi angle than a mythology one, this being in a near-future space station. I'll figure out why they want it though, you're right that I need to.

Also, how do you view your poll results?

just make sure you vote... lol

I guess my real question is: Is this a good enough idea that it would be worth a year of two's worth of work to complete?

If the goo gun is 'only' as important as the grav gun, then it's still a key mechanic of the game, and the one that currently stands out. It still needs designing further. If you can come up with more details, that will help answer whether it's worth the time

This is a good idea in my opinion, but there needs to be more details. Right now it's more of an outline, fill in those lines and you ought to have an awesome mod

I read what you had a few nights ago. I actually find it could be rather compelling, develop the idea.

I liked your choice of starting in the centrifuge, its a nice hook.

I think that by the feedback on this site and talks with personal friends, I have decided that this is worth pursuing.
I will start heavy concepting and will post new information on my account blog until enough is done to make a page for the mod.

Wish me luck!

I reckon the real key is to start identifying the point of the gun. What benefit does scraping together goo have - any why have it work that way? What makes it different to the grav-gun? The gun works in a fairly unusual manner - it would be a pretty good idea to start reasoning it's funtionality and questioning it's workings.

I am going to post this on the steam forums, see what response I get there.

A goo gun sounds cool, but more detail would be nice.

Agreed with everyone before me. Although I can't say too much for the story, need more so I can relect on it.

I remember now-I came up with it a long time ago, then forgot, but the goo is radioactive.
Yes, it changes everything.
You see, while the Alpha is the technical leader of the cult, the actual administration is going on behind the scenes by greedy men. Thus, when the alpha dies, he doesn't care, he just wants to make a profit out of it. And since he generally wants to kill, torture, and conquer people, he can now use the goo for that. Being extremely radioactive, it would make an excellent weapon, if there were only some way to make use of it, as it has attatched itself to the walls. So, they are be evil, but they're also quite innovative. Thus, it only takes them a few days (you're in a coma) to make a gun that, while defiling their leaders body, would help them acheive their alterior goals.

Of course, you are immune to the toxic effects as you are given a suit when you are forced to test the goo gun.

As for the actual functionality of the gun, it would allow you to do a number of things:
-destroy enemies by using it as a biological/physics weapon
-solve puzzles:
-simple stacking/stretching puzzles
-electronics manipulation (goo impairs flow of electricity)
-it would be a very cool but advanced concept, but I was thinking of making a simulation of the effects of the blocking in air. This would be a hard to implement puzzle, and rare if done at all. Basically you could cover a vent with the goo (or anything else for that matter, but you control the goo) and be thus have the air build up underneath you. The goo would then explode and you wold shoot up into the air.

Another idea I had were goo grenades. These would contract all goo in the room to their location and then explode, sending goo flying everywhere.

Edited by: Deathbagel

to me,this seems very interesting.its like a remake of black mesa but even better!good job on the story!you just need to add more detail

Thanks, just wondering though, how's it like black mesa?

better off with a massive underground complex where a cult would, with the deamonic pagan ritual, abusing quantum physics with fusion, that could destroy the whole universe by making a beam of light unstable, bionics is just part of progress, witg a alien artifact stolen being transported back to earth

Well, thanks for the suggestion but I think what I have makes some sense. Maybe I need to share more backstory.

The Alpha came down into Earth orbit in a massive escape pod. It, with a combination of hypnotism and just its being imposing managed to gain a following. They served merely to protect the Alpha, and to gain the money they needed to do so. So, they convinced people that they served to promote inter-species relationships. This is in addition to the fairly standard motivations of comradery and belonging. They managed to draw huge amounts of people, a large portion of them wealthy, all of whom devoted everything to the cult. Thus they quickly ammassed large amounts of money, with which they built a massive space station, both to protect the Alpha and serve its needs. To better protect the the station with the limited numbers (as only inner members would be able to visit the station itself), they began experimenting with bionics. Over time, as happens with most cults, they begin to become less about their ideals, and more selfish. The son of the original founder begins to devert more and more of the riches sent to the Alpha for himself. He becomes crazy with wealth, power, and fanaticism and the human experimentation and manafacture of cruel weapons continues, now not for protection, but rather for his enjoyment. Thus, when the Alpha dies, he doesn't care, he simply goes on experimenting and killing. The death of the Alpha has no impact on the cult whatsoever, as only the top members are allowed to visit him. There's no danger of information to be leaked because the top members are warped beyond the ability to think for themselves. Another reason for the leader's resentment is that he was bionically modified without his will. His father, in an effort to encourage all to modify themselves, had himself and his young child (current leader) implanted with a variety of machines. While the leader is not very visibly deformed, he has a lot of internal problems, and is resentful at his father and the world as a whole for it.

not really, could do if a secret cult rose and over powered deepspace 9 in the darkness between the stars where dark matter exists and in the ruins were gov spies, and you play the marine from aliens with the flashlight on the shoulder

Deathbagel: you have very good potential for a story here. It is fairly complex, but if you can tell it well within the game, it can be good.
Is the "goo-gun" a central thing to the story and the gameplay? Will it be something that the enemy wants to get hold of?
What will this play like? The goo-gun and it's mechanics dictate fast-paced, action oriented gameplay from first or third person.
I would recommend AGAINST using a teched-up super soldier as a main character. It is hard to portray such characters if you don't have any knowledge on how they train and how they would act. Suggest something closer to an everyday civilian. Gordon Freeman, for instance, is pretty badass for a normal science guy, going against impossible odds half the time.
Nail down a good storyline, with locations, characters (keep to a minimum, you are modder, and lip sync is difficult and time-consuming!), and other things you need to make. Write all that down in a to-do list, and post it here, so the modding gods might smile upon you.

zenarion wrote: Is the "goo-gun" a central thing to the story and the gameplay? Will it be something that the enemy wants to get hold of?

Yes, the goo gun is central to the gameplay and with its associated puzzles will likely be the only truly unique gameplay feature (although I plan to also feature some minor mapping techniques). As far as the story, it isn't terribly important, you were just summoned as a random prisoner to test the weapon. In the eyes of the enemy, it is an important weapon. I think that they would want to get the gun back, although they would also want to kill you, so it works out to the same thing, as they wouldn't be able to get the gun without killing you. While the majority of the cult wouldn't know that the player killed the Alpha (the leaders don't want them to know the Alpha's dead as they want to continue running the cult for their own purposes), they would still know he is a prisoner escaped from the highest security area of the prison, and thus presumably dangerous. This wouldn't have to be described in-game, as it doesn't matter for what the player thinks they are being chased for, as in fact they are being chased for both stealing their gun AND simply being a dangerous individual.

zenarion wrote: What will this play like? The goo-gun and it's mechanics dictate fast-paced, action oriented gameplay from first or third person.

This will likely be a first-person game in a similar style to Half-Life 2, as I will be using source and don't want to change basic systems as it won't be nessecary to achieve what it is I want. However, the pace will likely change depending on the amount of available goo in an area, as the other weapons available in the game will only be sort of standard weapons (ie. pistol, assualt rifle, shotgun).

zenarion wrote: I would recommend AGAINST using a teched-up super soldier as a main character. It is hard to portray such characters if you don't have any knowledge on how they train and how they would act. Suggest something closer to an everyday civilian. Gordon Freeman, for instance, is pretty badass for a normal science guy, going against impossible odds half the time.

I agree generally. I was planning on making the main character silent (like in HL2), so I don't think it should make too much of a difference. However, there is a simple way that would still fit perfectly with the storyline I have. Originally, the team would have consisted of a leader, a miitary tech/pilot guy, and you (just kind of extra manpower). I want it to be a very small team for two reasons. First, as you said, I wouldn't want to have to make too many characters. Second, in the game world, you are being launched into space, and space launches want to have to carry as little weight as possible. However, it would work equally well if it consisted of a leader, a military tech guy, an extra soldier, plus you, a pilot. This makes more sense as you would then have only the initial weapons training course as your experience in fighting. (After all, why would experienced soldiers need to go through a basic weapons course?). Then, at your initial encounter in the space station, the extra soldier dies a grizzly death. Thus, your team members, needing more manpower, give you the fallen soldier's gun and have you help them in combat. Unfortunately, in either case I am going to have some "super-soldiers" as main characters, and keeping with the current storyline I see no way around that.

On another note, can anybody think of a good name for this? I've tried, but with no luck.

Edited by: Deathbagel

name .... SUPER GOOEY SPACE ALPHA! just kidding ... mabye you should think of a name for the cult and call the game that also you need a name for the "goo-gun" it can't be too long either something like Morph gun but more technical